Eye Travel: Fantastic Floors

Our instinct, when taking in travel sights, is to look high for new perspectives. But it can also be fascinating to look down, and find unexpected beauty in the floors on which we tread.

We’re reminded of Fay Wray’s wonderful story about Cary Grant, who was once besotted with her. “Whenever we went to a party,” she recounted, “he would always sit on the floor beside me. I thought that was kind of beautiful, like that’s where he wanted to be.” Kind of beautiful, or kind of crazy — on ne juge pas — but here are some elegant floors that might tempt Mister Grant.

The terrazzo floor (above) is from the Museo Correr in Venice. Viewed up close, the shattered colors remind us of an abstraction by Jackson Pollock or Jean-Paul Riopelle.

We love the clever whimsy of these tiles — see how exactly the same circles can act as air bubbles from a fish or eggs guarded by a gander — and the irony that they should be found in the home of one of America’s least-whimsical authors. From the bathroom floor of the Hemingway House in Key West.

These floor tiles, from a lovely little hotel outside Carcassonne in France, have a shifting perspective that evokes the art of M. C. Escher. Intellectually mischievous, Escher once asked: “Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?” Look again at these tiles (above), and let your eye play tricks.

When we finally arrived at the little palazzo in Marsala, Sicily, it was in the darkness of near midnight. And we confess we found the place a little forlorn. But, the next morning, when the sun had spread like a song through the house, we realized the same floors over which we had dragged our suitcases the night before were in fact these luminous beauties. And our holiday spirits lifted.